Painting the Playground

As a one-day-a-week child-care provider for the lovely Madelyn Simone, (her Nana days), I’ve spent many a spring and summer afternoon at the many playgrounds scattered between Canton and Ashland. Many still resemble the playgrounds of my youth, with swing sets, metal slides and merry-go-rounds, although we haven’t encountered a teeter-totter in our explorations. Remembering the blistering hot temperature of the slide against my bare skin, and a massive wipeout at Veteran’s Park when I missed my connection with the merry-go-round, I issue words of caution as we undertake our playground adventures. However, I also know that a skinned knee is small payment for the socialization experiences and the large motor skills being honed at the playground.

What I’ve discovered is that play areas for children in at least some municipalities and school districts have suffered from lack of funds and/or attention in recent years. I’m not suggesting that every playground needs modern equipment, as Madelyn is content to swing on the swings until the cows come home, but many would benefit from a new layer of mulch or a fresh coat of paint.

As my problem-solving mode kicked into gear, I began to think about how we could gather people together to spruce-up our local play areas, even checking out the Kaboom! website for potential funding options.

But wait a minute. I’m not talking about play areas like the Salvation Army Kroc Center, funded and maintained primarily by private dollars. No, nearly all of the playgrounds we’ve visited are either city, county or school-based, paid for by your tax dollars and mine. But since local communities and school districts are squeezed for money, the needs at the bottom of the priority list (like parks and playgrounds) may not get the attention they deserve. We make the same decisions with our personal budgets when we opt for home safety repairs rather than cosmetic touch-ups.

What does government do when there isn’t enough money to paint the playground? It either decreases spending or it raises taxes. In an incredibly complicated system of taxation (income tax, capital gains, gasoline, sales, real estate, specific levies, etc.), one way is relatively simple: raise the rate at which a person’s income is taxed. Little by little, the piece of our income pie that goes to fund government services gets bigger. Unless the size of our personal income pie increases, our disposable income shrinks, a sliver at a time.

Another way for government to increase its revenue is to enact a sales tax. Have you checked out your cell phone bill recently? A tax of about 6% is withheld, along with the Federal Universal Service Charge, the OH TRS Surcharge, and the OH Reg Fee. Fill your gas tank – pay tax. Get a tattoo or massage – pay tax. Use natural gas to heat your home – pay a gross receipts state tax that increased to 4.987% last September. Apparently the gas company had difficulty with that multiplication too, because they just dunned us to make up the difference between the old rate and the new.

Those in the know determine that Americans pay about 30% of their income in taxes. This percentage is up from the 5% rate in 1910, but has allegedly remained steady-ish for a number of years. In contrast, residents of France pay 53% of their income in taxes, so scratch a proposed relocation to Paris. 

With an increase in municipal income taxes proposed for the ballot in November, along with the struggles the country is facing, we as a community are faced with this question: what should government provide for us? And how big a slice of our income pie should the city, county, state and feds enjoy?

There are no easy answers to funding the services we’ve grown accustomed to and can’t provide on our own. Unless we can somehow entice LeBron James or Johnny Football to move into town and float the city budget for us, we do need to pay our fair share to maintain a safe community. But how much is too much, and what should we expect from paying our fair share? Here’s hoping for some open dialogue before we head to the ballot box in November.